By now, you’ve probably owned up to the fact that G Suite Legacy accounts are going away and you’re going to have to pay $5/head/month because you want a custom domain. Maybe you’ve even converted over – in fact, there’s a good chance since Google has been saying that July 1 was doomsday.
But if you’ve been lazy about the whole thing, your sloth has been rewarded! At least, if you have a personal Gmail account.
Per this support note:
“If you’re using the G Suite legacy free edition for non-commercial purposes, you can opt out of the transition to Google Workspace…you can continue using your custom domain with Gmail, retain access to no-cost Google services such as Google Drive and Google Meet, and keep your purchases and data.”
And again, they emphasize that free is for non-commercial, personal use only:
“G Suite legacy free edition is only intended for personal non-commercial use. If you’re using G Suite legacy free edition for business purposes, we will transition your account to Google Workspace. G Suite legacy free edition does not include support, and in the future we may remove certain business functionality.”
My suspicion is that Google staffers themselves were the only vocal group that Google cared enough about to relent. Many of them, quite naturally, use Gmail and since they’re more tech-savvy than the average bear, it’s not surprising they have custom domains. This represents a new cost for some of them, and it’s likely to add up to $50-100 a month when you think about an engineer, spouse, kids, maybe grandma and some uncles, etc. Enough that the engineer is going to complain about it and often it’s these kinds of small unexpected charges that really grind employees. For the sake of morale, Google probably said fine, we’ll leave it free, because the hassle of making it an employee-only perk and sorting it when people join or leave Google was probably seen as too much of a hassle.
Note that if you want to stay on free, you need to take action. “If you don’t take any action, your account will be suspended starting on August 1, 2022.” See the support note for what you need to do.
But of course, that’s just my speculation. So, did you:
- already move to a non-Google service?
- move to a paid account but now plan to move back to free?
- been lazy and now you’re going to stay on free?
Let us know in the comments below!
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I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308
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I was in the process of moving 10+ accounts. I will probably still move them to free Gmail with email forwarding from the custom domain. Give me a bit more time at least.
Being lazy FTW!
Damnit! I just upgraded to Workspace.. I just use it for personal.. How can I opt-out from the transition? I want to go back to the legacy..
If you transitioned to Google Workspace after January 19, 2022 and used G Suite legacy free edition for personal use, you can contact Support .
URL was eaten. https://support.google.com/a/answer/1047213
For me, after 12 years of using them.. this kind of actions are not “so funny”, thats why i’ve moved my only personal email to Zoho. Same thing, different brand.
Migrated to Office 365 family. Although this is still a good thing, becuase it “buys time” for migration of Google Account data (e.g. in Google Maps).